He was a native of France, hailing from the Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, then trained to be a Mountie halfway across the world in Regina, SK.

But 45-year-old Const. Fabrice Georges Gevaudan was no foreigner in New Brunswick, which he has called home for over six years. Those who knew him said his quick smile and wit meant he fit right in, settling in Dieppe, just outside Moncton, with his wife and young step-daughter.

Gevaudan is also described as motorcycle enthusiast and a highly capable shooter, one who recently took additional training to improve his gun skills.

“He had a desire to take it to a higher level, beyond the requirements of his job,” said Mo Hepworth, who works at NB Ammo Sales and teaches a sport shooting course that Gevaudan took in 2012 and “did very well.”

The men had been keeping in touch in the last few years, and travelling together to sport shooting events around Moncton and Halifax.

Hepworth said Gevaudan had recently started his own website selling guns. According to a New Brunswick provincial document, Gevaudan and business partner Fabrice Neveu established a company called GNEXPORT in March, 2013.

According to Hepworth, the website sold firearms to “the proper people with the proper licenses.”

“He believed in the system, and unfortunately, one of those people got through the system,” he said.

Gevaudan is also described as both a joker and a polite man deeply dedicated to his work. As a youth worker, Corey Ferguson interacted with Gevaudan, a general duty officer in Moncton, on a number of occasions, and said his joking manner broke the tension in what were often stressful situations.

“He was a fantastic officer to work with — compassionate, empathetic, also very funny, which I think was great,” she said. “I come across a fair number of officers here in the course of my work, and he was one that definitely stood out as being very fun in a very not-fun situation.”

In 2012, Gevaudan testified at the trial of a Dieppe man accused of beating and stabbing his former fiancée.

He told the court that he and his partner arrived at the scene of what appeared to be a domestic altercation, where a woman was on the sofa frantically waving them inside. Gevaudan dealt with her, while his partner spoke with the boyfriend.

“I would say she was terrorized. I could see that in her eyes,” Gevaudan was quoted as saying in the Moncton Times & Transcript at the time.

While he stressed he doesn’t know the details of the shootout that killed his friend, Hepworth said he isn’t surprised at the fatal outcome, even knowing Gevaudan’s impressive shooting skills.

Hepworth believes his friend and other officers would have been extremely careful not to take too many shots in a residential area, because of the risk to civilians.